Conroe ISD honors Mittie J. Turner Campbell, names school after first Black female principal

CONROE — Mittie J. Turner Campbell lived in service to others.

In 1916, during the Jim Crow era in Montgomery County, that meant single-handedly teaching 143 children, ages 12-14, at Conroe Independent School District’s Black public school.

Dozens upon dozens of middle schoolers packed into a single classroom were no match for Campbell. The lifelong educator became the school district’s first woman principal in 1917 after her predecessor was drafted into World War I.

Over a century later, Conroe ISD will commemorate Campbell’s legacy by naming its newest elementary school after her. The school board voted on the name June 18, and Mittie J. Turner Campbell Elementary School will open August 2025.

Skeeter Hubert, CISD school board president, explained that this recognition is not just about acknowledging Campbell’s achievements as an educator, but also as a Black woman.

“Speculation was rife when a woman was put in charge of the school,” according to an April 1918 article published in the Conroe Courier. “But (Campbell) has made good and with the assistance of her faithful teachers the school is closing out in a few weeks its best session.”

On top of the misogyny of that era, Hubert also commended Campbell’s tireless efforts to advocate for Conroe’s Black community.

“We want to say that, ‘You don’t see color, I don’t see color,’” Hubert said. “But at the end of the day, recognizing people for their accomplishments and also recognizing that (Mittie), for example, did it during a time where you couldn’t be Black in Conroe, Texas, is even more astonishing.”

Campbell, whose parents were born enslaved, taught during a time when 12 African-Americans were lynched across Montgomery County from 1887 to 1945, according to a Sam Houston State University database .

“It’s meaningful to me to know our community is doing everything we can to overcome the reputations of our past, the sins of our fathers and turning the page on racism, in general,” Hubert said.

related to Montgomery County

These Montgomery County residents are talking about race — and don’t want to be the only ones

by Céilí Doyle / Staff Writer

Why Mittie J. Turner Campbell?

Campbell’s legacy may have been lost to history if it wasn’t for John Meredith.

On a humid September morning, the 74-year-old peered over Campbell’s ornate, granite headstone emblazoned with her first husband’s name, “Turner,” inside the Conroe Community Cemetery.

“The constant you see with this family is the level of education,” Meredith said. “(Mittie) was always giving to others.”

Meredith is president of the Conroe Community Cemetery Restoration Project , the organization leading the rehabilitation of this Black cemetery, which was long-neglected by overgrown brush and forest in Conroe’s historic Black neighborhood Madeley Quarters.

Since 2011, Meredith, local genealogist Jon Edens and scores of volunteers have identified, restored and/or marked over 350 graves dating back to 1892.

The land was designated a “Historic Texas Cemetery” by the Texas Historical Commission in 2021.

When Meredith recruited Andy Rapoza, a historian and resident of The Woodlands, to research the cemetery and petition the commission for a state marker, Rapoza was drawn to Campbell.

“Mittie was the epitome of a love for education,” he said. “She was a Black female teaching at a time when they were lynching people in downtown Conroe … it’s pretty remarkable.”

Rapoza discovered that in 1918, Campbell championed the Black community to raise funds to build a new, two-story school in Dugan, a neighborhood in south Conroe, to accommodate its growing student population. At the time, white residents opposed “having a colored school” in Dugan, but the school board overruled them.

The building was named the Mittie J. Campbell School for Negroes until 1927 when CISD renamed it after Booker T. Washington after deciding all-white schools should be designated by Texas heroes and all Black schools should be named after an African-American hero.

Earlier this year, Rapoza and Meredith, alongside Montgomery County Historical Commission member Annette Kerr, were inspired to nominate Campbell to CISD’s school board and make sure this time, her name would stick.

Rapoza’s eyes crinkled in awe as he and Meredith recalled their joy after the school board unanimously voted for the new elementary school to be named after Campbell.

“I am delighted she is being honored in this way,” Rapoza said.

‘If she can do it, I can do it’

Camara Walden, like Campbell, is an advocate for Conroe’s Black community. She co-founded the local nonprofit Developing Leaders Within Foundation , dedicated to providing mentorship and investing in the next generation.

When Walden graduated from high school in Montgomery County, she was the only Black woman in her graduating class at Magnolia ISD. And she certainly did not have any Black teachers.

“There was nobody I could look up to or relate to,” she said.

Walden has been a Conroe resident for over the past decade and thinks CISD’s decision to name a new school building after Campbell is a good step.

“It shows the Black women, little girls in the school district and in the community that it’s attainable,” Walden said. “I can be the principal, I can have a school named after me, I can overcome obstacles and it can be done.”

Carl White, president of Montgomery County’s local NAACP chapter, said Campbell’s life was a milestone in and of itself.

“But now, when children go through that school they will ask the question, ‘Who was Mittie J. Campbell?’” White added. “And from that standpoint her legacy will live on.”

But Walden wants CISD to act beyond the ceremonial and invest real dollars in restoring Conroe’s Black history.

For the 31-year-old the answer is simple: CISD should purchase and restore the Conroe Normal and Industrial College , a historic, private vocational school for African-Americans that has sat vacant since the mid-1990’s.

Over 100 years ago, Campbell taught those 143 sixth-through-eighth graders in a single classroom inside the college, known back then as the Conroe Industrial Institute for African American students, which graciously allowed the public schoolchildren to use its building before the original Mittie J. Campbell school was built.

“If CISD was able to acquire the college and actually allow the staff to do what they needed to rebuild, put Black folks in charge of rehabilitating, that would be a big push that would help the Black community in Conroe,” she explained.

Walden said a lot of Conroe’s Black residents want to see the college, which sits on a lot adjacent to the Conroe Community Cemetery, restored as a technical school or a part of Conroe High School.

Maybe one day, CISD students who attend the Mittie J. Turner Campbell Elementary School will grow up to take classes in the college, just a couple hundred feet from where Campbell is buried.